The power of love in advertising

We know that many of the most effective ads make people feel something. Ads that land in the top 25% for overall emotion are twice as likely to drive immediate sales. That’s because people may forget individual details of an ad, but they’re more likely to remember how an ad made them feel, and those feelings (positive or negative) can transfer onto the brand.

And love is the strongest positive emotion there is. So it’s always an important emotion in advertising.

But when we say that brands should target “love” in their ads, people sometimes assume we mean they need to go straight for the heartstrings and deliver a touching story with a swelling soundtrack, like a sweet story with a puppy or an emotional reunion between a child and their deployed parent. That approach absolutely can evoke love, but it's not the only way to do it.

Some of the best-performing ads we've featured in AdMiration over the years prove that humor can be just as powerful a route to love. But generic slapstick or a cheap laugh for laughter's sake isn’t the way to do it. Humor that’s built on a real human truth, a fresh observation or genuine affection for a character or brand can evoke love too. 

Here's a look at the different ways brands have earned love in AdMiration-featured ads — heartwarming and otherwise.

This is the classic route, and it works because humans are wired to connect with stories. 

Budweiser's recent Super Bowl ads are a masterclass in it. This year's "American Icons" follows a Clydesdale colt who befriends an injured baby bird, cares for it, and watches it grow — only to reveal the bird is a bald eagle, soaring above the now fully-grown horse as a nearby farmer tears up. It's unhurried, sentimental and leans fully into Americana — timed to Budweiser's 150th anniversary and the brand's 250-years-of-America messaging.

People really love it (Love: 55% vs. 27% norm), but a different brand telling the same story might not resonate as strongly or generate as much love. Budweiser has earned the right to this approach over years. Last year's "First Delivery" told a similarly tender story of an underestimated young Clydesdale proving himself by rescuing a runaway keg (Love: 48% vs. 27% norm).

Budweiser has built such a consistent emotional signature at the Super Bowl. Neither ad relies on a joke, a twist or even much product visibility — just an earnest story that people love. 

These are exactly the type of stories people may think of when they think about ads that evoke love.

But not every heartwarming ad stays warm the whole way through like those Budweiser examples — and that's often exactly why it works. Some great ads take viewers through a range of emotions before landing on love, and that range is what keeps people watching.

Dunkin's 2025 holiday spot "The Little Holiday Munchkin" is a great example. It follows the journey of a discarded donut hole through laughter, surprise and even a little sadness before a young boy sees the value of the donut hole. The ad ends with a lot of love — and it feels totally earned because we went through a whole journey of emotions to get there.

Waitrose's Christmas ad "The Perfect Gift" does something similar with a different structure, perfectly mirroring the beats of a classic rom-com — the meet-cute, the falling-in-love montage, a moment that threatens the relationship and a big romantic gesture at the end. Because the structure leverages a story arc people already know and root for, the dip in the middle makes the eventual high note land even harder. 

In both cases, the lesson is the same: love can often hit hardest when it's earned through a journey, not handed to viewers in the first five seconds.

But love can come from laughs too. Nature Valley's "Jealousy" is a great example: a raccoon puppet tries to steal a hiking family's granola bar, gets told no, then straightens up and suddenly say, "Okay, okay! What if I did a little dance?" It's a genuinely silly, funny premise — but it also reads as sweet and endearing, generating strong scores in both laughter and love simultaneously (Love: 35% vs. 27% norm, Laughter: 19% vs. 7% norm).

PG Tips' "At Home With Monkey" from last year takes this even further. The ad brings back the brand's iconic Monkey mascot in a reality-TV-style "at home with" spot alongside his wife, Alice (played by Emily Atack), full of banter, inside jokes and a few playful jabs about their relationship. People were charmed by the warmth and familiarity between Monkey and Alice, describing it as feeling like "watching a comedy drama" rather than an ad. The relatable, lightly-bickering-married-couple dynamic (paired with a well-loved mascot, which we’ll talk more about next), produced a lot of love for the ad (Love: 34% vs. 21% norm), as well as laughs (Laughter: 17% vs. 7% norm).

In both ads the funny moments get people laughing, but that humor is built on something relatable or endearing enough that warmth follows right behind it. And that’s a very powerful combination for advertising.

Distinctive characters and assets can become a shortcut to love once a brand has built up enough history with them. Once you have a brand mascot that people love, you can put them in funny situations and still evoke love at the same time. 

In Pillsbury's "Big Biscuits" and PG Tips' "At Home With Monkey," love spikes every time the brand's mascot appears onscreen. Dulux's "Life is What You Paint It" uses Dorothy the same way, with love peaking both times she shakes paint out of her — as a puppy and later as an adult dog.

M&M's "What Have I Done" from earlier this year is another example of how incredibly efficient mascots can be at producing emotional moments. The ad shows Yellow M&M popping a new M&Ms POP’d Caramel into his mouth with a “Mmm!” The young man sitting next to him takes note, saying, “I didn’t know M&Ms liked eating M&Ms.” Yellow responds, “Who’s eating M&Ms?” He then notices the bag of M&Ms POP’d Caramel he’s been eating out of and yells in horror. Red and Orange M&M enter the room and fall to the floor screaming “What have you done?!”

The ad is just 15 seconds long and it makes people feel both love and laughter and successfully introduces a new product. Because people already love the M&M characters and love seeing them in funny situations, the ad doesn’t have to set up a heartwarming moment or tell a long, engaging story. It can deliver the product news in a funny and engaging way and people still love it, because they already know and love the characters.

Music doesn't create love on its own, but it can intensify whatever emotion is already building, so it’s important to use it wisely.

Miller Lite's 50th-anniversary spot "Legendary Stories" is a great example of music setting the tone. The ad pairs a black-and-white montage of decades of Miller Lite drinkers with David Bowie's "Rebel Rebel" and narration from Christopher Walken, and the choice of song does a lot of the work to land the emotion. It conveys the feeling of nostalgia and celebration immediately, matching the vintage, retro feel of the photos on screen. It creates a vibe that leaves people feeling love (Love: 35% vs. 27% norm). 

Coca-Cola's "Bubbling Up," the first ad in its FIFA World Cup campaign this year, shows a different way music can build love: gradually, through mounting anticipation. The ad follows a woman in a crowded elevator as World Cup excitement quietly spreads through a city — starting slowly, then pulling more and more people into the same feeling as it builds. Love and "like" run neck and neck for most of the ad, but once the music hits its chorus, love breaks away and peaks at its highest point of the entire film.

The lesson from both ads is that music can set the emotional pace and make the feelings in the ad stronger, whether that's an instant wave of nostalgia or a slow-building swell that pays off right when the love does.

Finally, we touched on this when we mentioned Budweiser earlier but it’s worth a deeper dive — love doesn’t have to be built in a single ad, it can be built over years or even decades, until a whole platform becomes shorthand for an emotion.

Dove's "Real Beauty" campaign is the clearest example of this. Since launching in 2004, it's tackled the same core idea — that real beauty shouldn't be defined by narrow, unrealistic standards — through dozens of different creative executions.

We’ve watched the platform expand from "Real Beauty Sketches" to "The Code" to last year's "Change the Compliment," which reframes how adults praise young girls, shifting the focus from "you're so pretty" to "you're so brave" or "so smart." 

Each new chapter finds a fresh angle (AI, social media, everyday compliments), but the underlying belief and tone never change, which means every new ad gets to lean on all that the brand has spent building over 20 years rather than building it from scratch.

“Change the Compliment” scored incredibly high on love (Love: 50% vs. 27% norm). And while it’s clearly a heartwarming ad in its own right, it feels more credible and powerful because Dove is the brand behind it. 

An ad that doesn’t make people feel is more likely to be unsuccessful. And love is an incredibly strong emotion, so it’s worth targeting with your ads. But don't assume the only route to love is a heartwarming, sentimental story. Humor can get you there too — as long as it's rooted in something true, relatable or genuinely affectionate rather than a cheap laugh. 

The ads that combine laughter and love tend to outperform ads that only make people laugh, because the love is what people carry with them after the joke fades.

Whether you get there through a twist, a mascot, a soundtrack or two decades of brand consistency, the goal is the same: make people feel something they won't forget — and make sure your brand gets the credit for it.